If real life were a video game, I'd still be broke.

While I'm not quite the 1% currency-wise in any of the games that I play, I'd say that compared to the Rockefellers bidding max on BMAH mounts and the few people I know who wouldn't be able to raid if their guilds weren't paying for repairs, I'm pretty middle-class. That's not to say "middle class" in a video game translates to "middle class" IRL, for it's so much easier to make money in WoW that not being ridiculously wealthy in it is actually a failure. Honestly, even with as much gold as I have, translated into the real world, I would be just as upper-middle-lower-class as I am in real life, and my in-game tactics for making money are just as inadequate as they are outside.

Unsurprisingly, the money-making lessons one can glean from gaming are pretty analogous to what we see outside of it. Sure, there's meritocracy, working hard so one can save and eventually become rich, both feasible and tantalizing mythical in either environment, for then there are the real methods of making gold/Simoleans/Neopoints/money en masse: stealing, cheating, wage slavery, etc. As much gold as one has, it's nothing compared to what Chinese farmers make teleporting to mining nodes and paying teenagers a few dollars a day to spam in trade. Nothing makes more Neopoints than running an auto-buying program, nothing is as quick and easy to earn Simoleans as good old "motherlode," and there's nothing that makes more money in the real world than organized crime, drug trafficking, and sex slavery.

It's a rather negative but realistic sentiment. I'm not promoting the use of bots nor suggesting that everyone smuggle heroin. In fact, the consequences of subversive activity can be just as harsh in-game when one equates the potential real life losses (assets, freedom, life) to the punishments for cheating (inventory, characters, life-long ban), and many people do equate them. However, it doesn't stop tons of players every day from taking those risks to get ahead, accumulate wealth, or pull themselves out of destitute situations, because for better or worse, in-game societies are a reflection of the ones in which we actually live and are full of the same stratification, inflation, and artificial prestige-laden consumerism that we experience in real life.

-Avia.

The Flow of Gold

Now that I have a ton of gold on my old server that I haven't yet moved to the new one, I've been thinking of dumping a bunch of it on the supreme gold sink: the Black Market Auction House. If it weren't for the BMAH and battle pets, gold on an old server would be like having a bunch of money in the currency of a defunct country, but now it just means that I can camp multiple places for chances to win Unclaimed Containers full of Tier 3 bracers and cat carriers. What was that? They can have mounts inside them, you say? Well I'm sure that one person who got a Mimiron's Head for 10k is ecstatic, but I'll be over here transmogrifying a slot that no can see anyway and playing with my 8000g Siamese.

While I'm trying to hemorrhage money, my guild is starting to rake it in for we just opened our raid to buyers this week, something I've never before had the opportunity to experience coming from less competitive/10-man guilds. In the meanest sense, it's the sale of our services that is set to make us a small fortune over the next few months. Some would say that this is the true end-game for high-ranked guilds, an understated but vital part of raid preparation for the next tier or expansion when consumables and repairs will rapidly drain bank funds.

As for me, I rather liken it to being a mercenary for hire. An inexperienced stranger is in our midst, eager for the spoils of war and the thrill of battle. What he lacks in knowledge and skill, he makes up for with gold. We tell him to stay out of our way while we do the real fighting, and once we've salvaged a body of any useful armor, we toss our patron whatever we don't need or what he has bartered for. But we are not unfriendly. When the battle wanes, we invite him to joke with us, listen to our stories, and dance together. At the end of the night, some of us shake his hand before we part ways, a favorable transaction for the both of us having been completed. Next week brings another opportunity for riches.

Want to be a part of it? Read this post and then contact one of our officers.

-Avia.